


Never A Good Day to Die

by Princess of Geeks (Princess)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Season 3, The Devil You Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-16
Updated: 2010-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:49:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the mission to Netu, Jack and Daniel decompress and, each in his own way, reaffirm what's important in life. Character contrast is the focus of this one. A very quiet fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never A Good Day to Die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sonata Night](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sonata+Night).



> Beta by Green Grrl.  
> Written for the 2006 Jack/Daniel Ficathon on Live Journal.

_i don't mind working but  
i'm scared to suffer_

\-- tom petty and the heartbreakers

^^^^

Amazing, how staff weapon wounds were self-cauterizing. There wasn't much for Fraiser to do, really, or for Teal'c and Carter to have done on the ship before the doc got her hands on Jack.

Jack just took it; the voyage, the transfer to SGC, the exam. He had had plenty of practice in gritting out pain, bearing the unbearable, thinking the unthinkable ... well, no reason to jump on that train of thought now, was there...

The air conditioning had been a nice contrast, when they got into the ship, and in general Jack always appreciated creature comforts like that. Just lounging in the cargo hold for the trip home was an ecstatically exciting simple pleasure, compared to the trip to Hell they'd just had. And that would in fact be Hell with a capital H, Jack mused, as Fraiser and the nurses fussed over him. He could hear Daniel and the team with other nurses and docs, behind the curtains. He wondered if he'd ever engage Daniel, over beers in some nice suburban restaurant with a view of the Front Range, in a discussion, good Catholic boy that'd he'd once been, of the implications of Sokar/Satan for religions besides the not-so-defunct pantheons of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. Or. No. He really didn't think he'd ever want to do that...

Daniel had been way, way too quiet ever since they had beamed to the ship. Something was bugging him. He would tell Jack, or maybe he wouldn't.

But the infirmary. Even this hated place was much, much, _much_ nicer than a cage in Hell among all those other lost souls. Of course Jack would die before he'd admit that to Fraiser.

Jack lay on his narrow bed and looked at the concrete ceiling and tried not to think about the IV in his hand or the pain in his leg or the heavy earth above him. He played Mozart's "Requiem" in his head and eventually the Percocet put him into something that sort of resembled sleep.

~~~

Why Jack had kicked and fussed and bitched so much when Daniel had insisted on helping get him home was fucking beyond Daniel. It wore him out sometimes; Jack's relentless clinging to his image.

The guy was hurting, dehydrated, wounded. _For God's sake. Cut the badass whining and let us do our thing,_ Daniel wanted to say. But he bit his tongue and needled Jack right back when Jack needled him, and the goal was the thing, yes? The goal was right in front of him: Jack, home, on crutches, hitching himself up the front walk, Daniel at his elbow.

Jack was inflicting a running commentary of aggravation about the lousy drivers in the Springs; worst drivers Jack had seen in his effing life, worse than Lackland, worse than Hill. Now Chicago drivers -- they knew the meaning of a turn signal. And Minnesota? There was no traffic in Jack's Minnesota. There was slow-paced rural life, and drivers of battered pickups who always waved if you waved first. Hell, sometimes _they_ waved first. That index-finger, hand-on-the-steering-wheel flick of a wave. Daniel had heard about it, but never seen it firsthand. Daniel had never lived in small-town America.

Daniel hovered at Jack's elbow as Jack hauled himself up the walk. Daniel looked at the neglected lawn and assigned that duty to himself; it would get him outdoors, and with a couple of hits of Claritin he could certainly take care of the mowing and the edging and maybe even the pruning this weekend. It would be good; a nice change from trying to outthink.... Well, anyway. It would be good; something he could do for O'Neill The Invincible.

Daniel knew all about Chicago drivers, and Chicago everything. As he unobtrusively helped Jack into the house, steering him to the recliner and stowing the crutches somewhere Daniel wouldn't trip over them, he thought about it. What a twist of fate it was; both of them in Chicago years ago, both of them here now. Daniel copped to his bad habit of analyzing coincidences and trying to tease out a chain of causality. He yearned for a _why_ when ... things ... converged. It was his conditioned response to too many encounters with Fate, too many truth-dealing visions, too many bad trips. It had been drilled into him: Fate's gifts weren't gifts. They were Trojan horses. No bliss unpaid for, no happiness delivered without its exact price.

He flinched from his inner, incomprehensible slurry of mythology and doom and went to rummage in Jack's refrigerator. Always with the carry out, always with the canned goods. This thing about getting stranded off world was hell on the diet. Jesus. Sometimes Daniel would kill for a piece of fresh fruit, a simple glass of milk.

Right.

Off to the grocery store.

~~~

Cool leather against his arms. Lovely Percocet. The smell of his home, where he knew the perimeter, knew the deadbolts, knew the neighbors. Knew Daniel's brand of fussing noises. Kitchen, fridge door, bathroom, pacing. Jack listened, and relaxed.

_What a gift. What an effing impossible thing. This life thing. It was good._

"Um, I've gotta run to the grocery store if you want something besides green beans and frozen orange juice for dinner."

"You know, if I didn't have to go off world for a living all the time, I could get a dog. A dog would be nice."

"Do you have any preferences for dinner? Because I'll probably get some pasta, maybe some stuff to make a salad. They all do those bags of romaine and greens nowadays."

"A dog to come home to. Maybe a Lab mix; some kind of mutt from the pound, you know. A rescued dog. If I wasn't off world so much. Because I couldn't impose on the Wilsons to take care of a dog."

"Pasta or maybe a chicken. They cook off those roast chickens right in Albertson's."

"Yeah, then you don't have to heat up the house in the summer."

Daniel hung on his heel in the entry way, his back to Jack. _Ovens. Heat. Wrong thing to say, perhaps? Reminders of Hell and all that?_ Daniel was bland and neutral. "Chicken, then. Back in a bit."

Jack let his skull drop against the recliner head-rest. Daniel remembered to set the alarm and throw the deadbolt. Good Daniel. Thoughtful Daniel. Jack drifted.

~~~

Jack, sleepy, came to the table in silence, and he cooperated when Daniel helped him rest his foot on a chair while they ate. Simple food; roast chicken, a pasta thing with a little too much garlic, a tossed salad. Daniel had put a fresh dressing together for the bag of greens. Daniel had also gotten Jack some MGD and himself some sort of white wine from Chile. They did wine in Chile now. Who knew.

~~~

Daniel was finally winding down. It was odd how it was Jack's home that felt like home; not his own place. His place was somewhere to store things. Someplace he would never bring anyone to relax, an extension of his office. Since the day he had lost Abydos through his own hubris, this had felt like home.

~~~

Mellow and a bit tipsy, because Daniel had let him drink on top of the Percocet because what the hell, Jack didn't bitch too much when Daniel cleared the table while giving him orders about staying put in his chair and eating his fucking ice cream. Jack didn't want to be reminded that he should stay put, and it was just wrong for Daniel to be ordering him around in any case. There were no leftovers; only dirty dishes, except if you counted the half-bottle of Daniel's wine. Unopened beers did not count as leftovers. Daniel loaded the dishwasher, then came back to the table and heaved Jack up with an arm under his shoulder and got him into the living room. A certain among of futzing with an ottoman to elevate Jack's leg, and Daniel sank into the cushions beside him.

Jack sighed, didn't even try to hide it, as Daniel's arm went around him, as Jack let his head sink to Daniel's firm shoulder.

"No fire," Jack said quietly.

"Jack, it's July," Daniel said, dry and patient.

Jack snorted. He petted Daniel's thigh. It required no special effort or thought to move his hand like that, slowly, hypnotically. Daniel was nice and warm. Jack's leg ached; he was due for some more drugs but he wouldn't make a big deal out of it. Bedtime would be soon enough for them. Daniel's thigh -- smooth muscle under denim. Jack stroked his palm along and back, along and back, focused on the rhythm, on the feel of the fabric. He sank further into the sofa, further into Daniel's side, his hand repeating its placid track. Daniel sighed, and Jack felt him relax, too.

"Mission accomplished," Jack said.

"Yeah," Daniel said.

"So what," Jack asked. Maybe Daniel would tell him. It would be good to hear it, if he would. Jack would wait, though. He wouldn't ever bug Daniel to tell him stuff. Daniel would tell him, or he wouldn't. In the meantime, they had escaped from Hell, back up through Purgatory, back to the surface. He smiled, thinking maybe the narcotics hadn't worn off yet or he wouldn't be thinking this crazy shit, but the thoughts didn't stick. His attention kept returning to Daniel's warmth, Daniel's thigh, soft and yet firm under his hand.

~~~

If there had been a fire, even though objectively it was July and so that idea made no sense at all, Daniel would have had a meditative focus for his racing thoughts. But, he was relaxed anyway, even without a fire to gaze into, safe inside Jack's perimeter again, safe inside. Jack was asking what was up and Daniel would probably tell him. There wasn't anything, really, that Daniel wouldn't tell Jack or do for Jack when Jack asked for it, straight out, no fucking around.

The pause was long, though. Long enough for Jack's touch to sink in, to make him melt a bit and pull his focus down and in. It didn't make him hard, but it made him touch-sensitive, made him feel and see everything in the quiet room. Maybe he didn't need a fire at all. Maybe Jack's touch was just like a fire, warm and real and consuming. A good kind of fire, not the kind made with brimstone. The kind made with second-growth oak that had lain against Jack's fence for a season, or the kind that glowed under a metal grill, fed by sizzling drips of fat from a ribeye. That kind of fire.

Daniel didn't make Jack wait too long for his answer. Daniel had no reason to be contrary or bull-headed tonight. But he cursed himself, because in marshaling his thoughts, he had to see it again: Jack crumpling under the staff blast, Sam yanked away, Jacob's slack face, Martouf's crocodile tears, all of it, the sweat-soaked misery of it, the fucked-six-ways-from-Sunday nature of it, too vivid, again. He breathed, tried to find a way through. Well, words. Words might work. He seemed to have momentarily lost faith in words.

"It really sucked, watching you get shot like that. Again."

"Yeah, I'd have to say it sucked from my end, too."

"I'd have to say it was as close to a fatal situation as we've seen in a while."

Jack stirred, hooked his good leg over Daniel's knee, settled his arm a little further around Daniel's shoulders. "Our specialty. Houdini has nothing on us."

"And when our luck runs out, what then, Jack? How many times do you have to let ... some Goa'uld, some fuckhead with bigger guns, get the upper hand before that happens?"

~~~

Jack sighed. _Daniel! And they call ME Mr. Negative._ Yet Jack noticed no desire to yell or contradict. There was no fight in him. There was nothing to fight. They were here, they were alive -- him, Daniel. Carter, Jacob, Martouf, Teal'c. All of them. Go team. But there were, as always, ghosts in the shadows. Daniel apparently wasn't used to that yet, like Jack was. Though you'd think Daniel would be used to it. Sometimes Jack felt like Hamlet; welcoming the ghosts even with their trailing vestments of horror, because they were familiar ghosts, much loved. How could they not be welcome? He mentally saluted the ghosts.

"Daniel, in case it has escaped your notice, our luck did not run out. We got out, and got Jacob out -- and in a large part, may I remind you, because _you_ had the presence of mind to get that communicator back."

Daniel was silent. Never a good sign. Jack considered kissing, considered a slightly more massive frontal assault than kissing, but he was in no shape to finish anything he started tonight. He contented himself with stroking further and more firmly along Daniel's leg, getting some english on the dip next to the groin, getting up onto the hip. And anyway, he knew that pretty soon Daniel's protective instincts, such as they were, would kick in again and he'd be packed off to bed with narcotics. He didn't let himself sigh. But. Kissing was always a good thing. And a fire would have been nice. And a Lab, to lick the plates before they went into the dishwasher, and lie by the sofa at Jack's feet. While he was kissing Daniel.

~~~

Daniel listened to his thoughts and noted the comforting, wholly enjoyable swipe of Jack's hand for what seemed like a long time. He knew Jack was trying to distract him with the groping, but he knew that Jack knew that it probably wouldn't work. It was more reminder than demand. He smiled internally and closed his eyes. Jack's hand. Jack's wonderful hands.

Jack's hand, strong, sweaty, unhesitating, had clasped his and pulled him up, setting in motion the subterfuge that led to their first attempt at escape from the dungeon. It was good, always, in any circumstance, anywhere -- sublime, even. The touch of those hands. Daniel had the knowing touch of a friend, even in Hell.

And, yes, certainly, they had escaped. But someday they wouldn't. Someday they would fail. And the thought seemed a weight too great to carry, tonight. _What's wrong with me? Usually I'm the optimistic one..._

"Today is a good day to die," Daniel said, experimentally, trying out Teal'c's philosophy in the probably crappy Anglo interpretation of something the Sioux soldiers were reputed to have said. More than once, he'd heard Teal'c state it: All you could ask of life was a good death. Daniel could see the freedom that doctrine bestowed, but it held no appeal.

~~~

"No it isn't," Jack said, jerking upright, compelled to contradict whatever dark idiocy had overthrown Daniel's brain for the moment. God dammit, this was enough. Why did Daniel think this shit? Jack, upright, hands to himself, studied his lover's profile. Daniel kept looking at the empty fireplace. "It was not a good day to die. I don't ever choose that." Jack grabbed Daniel's thigh again, shook it, jarring his own wound in the process and wincing. "And neither do you."

Daniel looked at him, met his eyes. He looked long and silently, with that crease in his forehead. Jack wanted to shake his own head and worry, but instead he held Daniel's gaze as if daring him to look away, as if he could keep him focused on Jack by will alone. The moment held, and held, and broke only when Jack leaned back and closed his eyes. He kept his hand on Daniel's thigh.

"It's time for your meds," Daniel said, finally, and got up and went to the kitchen. Jack accepted the Percocet and the water. Then Daniel sat down, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, and put his arm around Jack again. Jack, eyes closed, imagined watching the fire, sitting here like this, like they had done last winter, like they had done in Minnesota.

When Jack felt the blurry sleepiness kick in, he murmured, "Time for bed," and his words put Daniel into action.

He was hoisted, no crutches, just a warm archaeologist under his arm, just like when they ringed out of Hell, strong and familiar. Daniel there to help him; him there to help Daniel. Like always.

They got awkwardly down the hall and into Jack's bed, and Daniel wasn't lying down, wasn't coming to bed. Jack clutched Daniel's hand anyway, making him sit there, until Jack fell asleep, or into something that very much resembled sleep.

~~~

Daniel sat on the bed until Jack's hand loosened and fell away, until his breathing evened out and threatened to turn to snoring. Daniel watched the calm face, the lax arms.

He was restless. He got up and went to the living room, found the remote and surfed a bit, drank some water, thought about another glass of sauvignon blanc, took himself out into the yard and looked at the stars.

Yup. There they were.

As they'd been since before Ra commissioned the pyramids, since before the Anasazi were driven out of New Mexico, since before the Goddess left Anatolia, since the hominids came down out of the trees. There they were. They burned, pure and distant. He looked at them. There was no meteor, no portent. Just a couple of satellites that he, Sam's student that he now was, noted automatically. He felt a tiny bit comforted by the moment of identifying them, in their hurtling orbits. He hadn't intended to give his heart. When he began, painfully, awkwardly, with many, many mistakes of judgment, to recuperate from the body blow that was Sha're's death, he'd thought he could protect himself. He'd thought that if he refused to love, any more, it would stop hurting quite so much. But without his choice, when he'd looked within, there was Jack. Already in his heart. Already every bit as important as Sha're had been; bound to Daniel, signed and sealed.

The fear of losing Jack sometimes choked Daniel, rising in his throat like vomit. He didn't think he could go through losing Jack, when or if it came to that. He didn't think he could break like that again.

_How can you miss someone when he's right here? How can you mourn the absence of someone who hasn't left?_

He might have said the words aloud.

He waited until the satellites fell below the horizon, and until he became certain that some sort of bugs were burrowing into his socks, and then he went inside.

~~~

Jack woke in pain, but dawn was filtering into his bedroom, and Daniel was snuggled against his back, naked, which was good, even though Jack couldn't get the full effect, having slept in his shirt and boxers. The bandage on his leg felt hot and stuck. Daniel's arm was over his ribs, and Jack smelled coffee from the fancy time-delay coffeemaker Daniel had brought over, some time back.

He breathed, listening to the silence. Daniel's glasses perched on the nightstand next to his own little amber container of drugs. If he had a dog, it would be licking his nose right now and demanding to be let out. He could get a dog, but it would be a lot to ask of the neighbors.

Daniel stirred behind him. Jack could feel Daniel's automatic morning hard-on, his dick, as always, awake before he was, and that made Jack smile. And Daniel's arm, moving of its own volition as Daniel slept, came a little tighter around Jack's ribs, and his body was warm and heavy against Jack's back. Daniel would like a dog, too. Jack was pretty sure.

end


End file.
